


Reflections Back

by HapaxLegomenon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Affectionate Clones, Canon Compliant, Clones as Family, Episode Tag, Episode: s07e02 A Distant Echo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Reunions, background Bad Batch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HapaxLegomenon/pseuds/HapaxLegomenon
Summary: Rex’s mood lifts with the ship; by all rights, he should be proud to have established a new ally in the war against the Separatists, but that’s not why he’s happy.Echo leans heavily on the wall, but he answers Rex’s smile with a tired one of his own.Rex and Echo, on the return flight to Anaxes.
Relationships: CT-21-0408 | Echo & CT-7567 | Rex, CT-7567 | Rex & Clone Troopers
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48





	Reflections Back

**Author's Note:**

> Let the clones hug, dang it. I really wanted to see Echo reuniting with his brothers, but if canon won't provide it to me, I'll do it myself.

This time, when they board the _Havoc Marauder_ , it’s with seven instead of six. The Poletecs wave from the surface of Skako Minor, some flying as ceremonial escorts in recognition of their new alliance. Rex’s mood lifts with the ship; by all rights, he should be proud to have established a new ally in the war against the Separatists, but that’s not why he’s happy. 

Echo is leaning heavily on the wall, but he answers Rex’s smile with a tired one of his own. Rex is relieved when they leave the atmosphere, thoughts full of the knowledge that they’ve found Echo, they’re all safe, and he never wants to set foot on this Sith-forsaken planet again. Unprofessional? Maybe. But right now, he doesn’t care at all.

“Glad that’s over with,” Crosshair grunts, walking between them to go slouch in the cockpit.

Echo rubs his hand over his eyes and nods in agreement. “You’re telling me,” he mumbles. He blinks, shakes his head slowly a few times, and Rex frowns, wondering if he should be worried. Then Echo’s eyes roll back in his head and he slides bonelessly down the wall.

“Echo!” Rex shouts, and he’s on his knees at Echo’s side before anyone else can even react. He wraps his hand around Echo’s bicep -- much smaller than it should be -- and holds him steady as Echo’s hand flutters to the side of his head.

Echo blinks up at him, looking disoriented. “Sorry, Captain. Think I fainted.” He’s shaking, too, but whether it’s cold or exhaustion or the post-battle adrenaline come-down, Rex doesn’t know, and Echo’s probably too messed up to be able to tell, either. 

General Skywalker is there almost as fast as Rex, and he touches Echo’s shoulder briefly before shrugging out of his Jedi cloak. Those cloaks are a quintessential part of the Jedi wardrobe, and Rex is touched when his General tucks the cloak over Echo like a blanket. 

“Thank you, sir,” Echo says hoarsely.

General Skywalker treats him to a smile. They’re becoming increasingly rare, ever since they lost Commander Tano. It’s been one of many worries on Rex’s mind, as of late. It’s the nature of war, and their lives, to lose people, but knowing that doesn’t make it easier. Like Cody said; it’s hard to be the survivor. Rex has been with his General since the start of the war; he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses him, too. Soldier on, he supposes. Like he always does. 

But, looking at Echo, at least sometimes there’s a chance for redemption. Maybe this will never happen again, but that’s fine, it’s worth it all to have this once. Rex gives into the temptation to cup his hand over Echo’s head, carefully avoiding the ports, just to prove to himself that his brother is really there. That Rex will be able to remove his name from his remembrances, knock the counter back a step.

“It’s really good to see you again, Echo. I’m glad Rex was right,” General Skywalker says. He pats Echo’s shoulder again, then Rex’s. “Get some rest, trooper. That’s an order. Rex, look after him.”

“Yes sir,” Rex and Echo say together. 

Echo watches as the General moves to the front of the shuttle, shepherding Wrecker and Hunter with him to give Rex and Echo as much privacy as is to be found on a small ship like this. “He’s a good man,” Echo murmurs, and Rex agrees wholeheartedly. Then Echo coughs out a laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smirks up at Rex. “You never give up, Rex, do ya?”

“Don’t know the meaning of the word,” Rex answers, as Echo coughs again and groans. He curls in on himself, digging his fingers into the side of his head, face pinched. From under the cloak, Rex can hear the clinking as Echo’s new metal legs rattle against the floorboard of the shuttle. “Echo?”

“Think the adrenaline’s worn off,” Echo mutters. “Or the sedatives.” Rex isn’t a medic; he’s not used to his brothers looking so vulnerable, and doesn’t quite know what to do about it when Echo’s mouth twists and he adds, “I feel like I’ve been chewed up and spat out by a sabrejowl.” Every clone knows the giant eels that swim around the platforms on Kamino, and Rex remembers from his training days what might happen if a clone falls into the water when the beasts are prowling nearby. Given Echo’s current state, It’s a pretty apt comparison, honestly.

Echo tries to push himself up from his awkward slouch, but his arms give out before he can manage to get upright. He sinks back to the floor with a pained groan and closes his eyes, but opens them again to squint in confusion when he hears the click of Rex’s armour disengaging. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Rex shoots back. He places his chest plate carefully to the side, next to his bucket, followed by his pauldron and shoulder pads, leaving him in only his blacks from the waist up. Officially, they’re not supposed to remove their armour during transport, and the skeptical slant to Echo’s eyebrows reminds Rex how much of a stickler he always was for the regulations. Rex believes in following orders as much as the next clone, but if there’s one thing he’s learned working with General Skywalker, it’s that sometimes the official rules aren’t the best way to get something done. Besides, he does have a direct order from his General to look after his brother, so that’s exactly what Rex is going to do. And frankly, General Skywalker himself will be more than enough to handle anything that can come at them during this quick transit. “Budge up, there,” he says, nudging at Echo’s knee.

Since he’s clearly too weak to manage it on his own, Rex helps Echo sit up and maneuvers them so that Rex is sitting behind him, with Echo pulled up between his legs and leaning back against Rex rather than against the cold, hard wall of the shuttle. He wraps the General’s thick, coarsely-woven cloak tighter around Echo’s shoulders and shuffles until he finds a position that’s as comfortable for them both as it’s going to get. 

Echo sighs, closing his eyes again as he leans into Rex’s chest. “You know, I didn’t think anyone was coming,” he admits quietly. 

And Rex doesn’t have an answer for that that doesn’t leave him swimming in guilt, because until a few days ago, nobody _was_ coming. There hadn’t even been an inkling until the sieges on Anaxes. They hadn’t even known he was alive until they found him, not for sure. 

Echo knows the regulations better than anyone. Don’t leave a man behind, but don’t risk a living man for a dead one. They’d left his body on the Citadel. He would have known that nobody was coming.

Rex likes to think of himself as a practical man, not dwelling on things that he can’t control or change, but he can’t help but wish that they’d gone back for Echo. Regulations be damned.

“So,” Echo says, with a deliberately joking tone, “what did I miss while I was off being a traitor?”

“You’re not a traitor,” Rex snaps. For just a moment, it’s Fives in his arms, terrified and confused as he dies, desperately insisting that he’s trying to do his duty; then it’s Tup, twisting in his restraints, ranting that good soldiers follow orders between bouts of horrified lucidity; Waxer, crying and betrayed. All his brothers, all gone now. “You had no choice. You’re not a traitor. You’re a war hero.”

“Is that what we’re calling prisoners now?”

Only the ones who survive, Rex thinks.

Echo shifts against him, leaning back so he can look Rex in the face. Rex isn’t sure what Echo sees there, but Echo’s voice is more serious as he asks, “Really, Rex… how are the boys?”

In a war, that’s never going to be a safe question, but Rex can also see plainly just how much Echo yearns to hear about his brothers. He can’t imagine being isolated from them for so long, the way Echo was. The idea makes his skin crawl. Being alone is an awful thought to any clone, and Rex knows for a fact that from the day he was born until the day he died at the Citadel, Echo always had at least one brother at his side. For many of those days, Rex had been that brother.

“Jesse and Cody were with me on the mission to find a strategic algorithm the Seps were using against us. Turned out to be you,” Rex starts. “They’re on the injured list for the moment but they’ll be fine. They’ll be happy to see you.” Echo looks pleased at the idea, and Rex adds, “Cody didn’t believe me when I said I thought you were alive. Looking forward to telling him ‘I told you so.’”

Echo grins, and says, “Make sure I’m around for that, I want to see his face.” Then he pauses, waiting, and finally asks, “Fives?”

It’s a long moment before Rex can find the composure to respond, and Echo clearly sees the pain in his expression, as his eyes go wide and he drops his head back to Rex’s chest. “So I’m the only one of Domino Squad still kickin’,” he mutters.

Rex rests his cheek on the top of Echo’s head, still feeling raw from that loss. Still feeling when Fives stopped breathing, and he unconsciously presses his hand harder against Echo’s ribs. “Yeah,” he sighs. After a second, though, he laughs a single scoff.

Leaning back to look up at him again, Echo asks, “What?”

“Speaking of kicking,” Rex says with a smirk, and he doesn’t even need to finish his sentence for Echo to groan. “Kix is gonna have a field day with you, brother.”

“I think I’d almost prefer the Techno Union,” Echo grumbles.

Rex holds him closer and finds it surprisingly difficult to say, “Well, I’m glad you’re in our hands now.”

Echo squeezes his eyes shut and nods against Rex’s chest. “Me too.” He grasps Rex’s forearm with a grip that feels brittle. Rex holds Echo as tight as he dares, trying to ignore the irrational fear that his emaciated brother might snap in his arms. Might stop breathing. 

All clones are brothers, but this is Echo. They’ve been fighting side-by-side for a long time, in the scope of this war. Rex watched him grow from an uptight, twitchy shiny on Rishi into one of the best ARC Troopers in the entire 501st, and there’s not many of that old guard still alive. They’re still in the middle of a war, but they can let themselves have this moment of vulnerability. They have General Skywalker and the Bad Batch watching over them, after all. If he can’t let his guard down now, then when? Rex presses his lips to the top of Echo’s head in a gesture that isn’t quite a kiss and breathes him in.

”We’ll get you back into fighting shape in no time.” It’s not what Rex wants to say, not by a long shot, but Echo pats his hand, and Rex knows that he understands. Echo’s skin is so pale and loose that his hand looks nothing like Rex’s, which isn’t right. They’re all the same. They all have the same blood on their hands, in their veins. Echo’s should be just like Rex’s, and Rex hates the fact that it’s not. He wraps Echo’s hand with his own and tucks them both under the General’s cloak, just so he doesn’t have to see them anymore.

Speaking of the General -- Rex hears him coming, despite the astoundingly quiet way that all Jedi seem to walk. He’s had a long time to get used to it, but Echo startles a little when General Skywalker plops gracelessly onto the floor beside them. Echo blinks, and the General holds out a water carton and a ration bar. “Here,” he says, “eat something. You look like bantha poodoo.”

Echo cough-laughs, and says sarcastically, “Thanks, General.” The cloak falls away from his shoulders when he reaches for the bar, and as Rex pulls it back up, he notices the General staring with unnerving intensity.

“Does your hand hurt?” General Skywalker asks abruptly.

Echo flexes his fingers around the end of the ration bar. “No more than the rest of me,” he says through a full mouth. Absently, he adds, “These rations are still _osik_.”

Rex snorts, and the General looks curious. “What does that mean?”

“Shit,” Rex translates.

General Skywalker looks childishly gleeful at the idea of adding a new curse word to his already expansive vocabulary. “I’m going to have to remember that one.” Which means that Rex is going to get a disappointed sidelong look from General Kenobi sometime in the near future. And probably a matching one from Cody. Oh well.

The General’s expression sobers, and he gestures with his chin towards Echo’s right arm, tucked awkwardly against his side, now boasting a scomp link where his hand should be. “I meant your other hand, Echo.”

Echo frowns like he doesn’t understand what General Skywalker is asking. Rex doesn’t blame him; he’s not following this train of thought, either. “I don’t have another hand, sir.”

The General’s mouth twists wryly. “I know that, but that doesn’t mean it can’t hurt.” He makes a fist with his right hand, and Rex hears the faint whirring of the actuators in his prosthetic knuckles. “Mine does sometimes. Doesn’t matter that it’s made of metal, it still hurts. And I’m guessing from the tension in your shoulder that yours does, too. I can teach you some meditations that will help with the pain, if you want.”

Rex frowns, disappointed in himself that he didn’t pick up on Echo’s pain, but Echo looks touched as he says, “Thank you, sir,” like it’s a surprise to him that General Skywalker notices these kinds of things. He’s been gone too long, Rex thinks. Their General’s always been like this. A good man, like Echo said.

General Skywalker squeezes Echo’s shoulder, then to Rex says, “We’re twelve clicks out. I already called ahead. Kix is waiting.”

“Great,” Echo mutters, rolling his eyes. “As if I haven’t spent enough time as a pincushion.” Rex rubs the back of his head in a way he hopes is comforting, and Echo leans into the touch. In a few minutes, they’ll arrive at the temporary base on Anaxes, and Rex politely ignores Echo’s twitchy silence for the rest of the flight.

“Come on, soldier,” he says when they land, “let’s get you walking out of here on your own two legs.” Or, you know, his droid two legs. Echo’s head is clearly in the same place because he glances down at his metal feet then up at Rex with a wry grin, but he doesn’t say anything and lets Rex pull him to his feet and help him into the Jedi cloak. Even on the General it’s a loose, oversized garment, and clones are smaller than him at the best of times, so Echo is dwarfed in the thing, but at least it’s something. Rex makes a mental note to scrounge up a spare set of blacks and armour as soon as he has a moment. With the way this siege has been going, there’s unfortunately plenty to go around.

Rex is ready to catch Echo if he collapses again, but the brief rest and the food seem to have done him some good. Echo is still unsteady and leans heavily on Rex, but he walks down the gangway under his own power. 

They exit into a suspiciously empty hangar space; Rex suspects Cody’s hand in that, which is only confirmed when he spots Cody himself waiting with Jesse and Kix at the bottom of the ramp, wearing an expression of detached concern that makes him look more like General Kenobi than his own brothers. Rex knows Cody better than that, though, and sees the protective softness in his eyes even from here.

Cody’s the first to step forward, offering Echo his hand, then smoothly reaching to take Echo’s elbow instead when he realizes the hand is gone. “Welcome home,” he says, with that familiar warm gravity that Rex has never been able to replicate.

Jesse is right behind him, and Rex steps back to let him take his place under Echo’s arm. Jesse scrubs his knuckles over the top of Echo’s head, and when Echo scowls he only laughs and pulls him closer and says, “Guess that’s the whole point of Echoes, eh? They always come back.” Then, more seriously, “I’m glad you’re back.” Even General Kenobi offers his own words of support, and Echo looks faintly overwhelmed at the reception.

“Alright, alright, let me through,” Kix orders, shoving at Jesse until the latter snorts and takes a half-step back. He keeps his hand on Echo’s shoulder, though, unwilling to let him go altogether. Rex understands; he is, after all, still standing close at Echo’s back, and there’s no real reason for him not to place one hand on Echo’s back and the other on Cody’s, so he does.

Kix is already wielding his medisensor like a weapon, running it over both the organic and mechanical parts of Echo while poking around in his medpac with his other hand. “You’re severely underweight, I’ve already drafted a high-calorie meal plan for you but General Skywalker’s initial report understated your condition, so we’ll have to make some changes to that. And I want you on regular supplement shots for the foreseeable future, you’re getting those directly from me so I can oversee --”

“Kix,” Echo tries.

“-- body temperature is too low, too, I’ll have to requisition some cold-weather gear until we can get your thermal homeostasis re-leveled, and of course I’ll need a full blood work-up, though I don’t really know what we’ll be able to do about any pathogens or parasites way out here unless we get a supply ship in --”

“Kix,” Echo says again, mouth twitching in amusement.

Kix ignores him and prattles on with frenetic energy, “-- and I really don’t like these peaks in your brainwaves, I want to get a proper reading on that and see what effects it’s having on your central nervous system. Neurological function seems to be okay, and pupil response looks good, at least --”

“ _Kix_ ,” Echo insists, this time grabbing Kix by the wrist as the medic tries to shine a penlight in his eye.

“ _What?_ ”

“It’s good to see you, brother,” Echo says, eyes twinkling. 

Kix pauses. Then finally relaxes a fraction, and smiles, and moves the hand on Echo’s face down to the back of his neck instead. He pulls Echo in to press their foreheads together for a moment, closing his eyes and exhaling slowly. “Good to see you too, Echo.” 

“And the Council wanted to deny permission for this,” Rex hears General Skywalker loudly whisper to General Kenobi.

“Oh hush,” General Kenobi whispers in return.

They’re easy to ignore, though. The clones stand in tableau like that, hands on their brother, reveling in this one-in-a-million chance at a reunion. It’s a rare moment of relief in the middle of a war, when so much of their time is spent mourning for the ones they’ve lost. Rex can’t remember spending a night celebrating for a brother found. He imagines that it won’t be much of an effort to convince their Generals to give them liberty for the rest of the day, if that’s what Echo wants. And if they can convince Kix to relax for a second. Tomorrow, they return to the siege. Tonight, they celebrate.

**Author's Note:**

> I watched TCW for the first time during quarantine and it _wrecked me_. What a beautiful show. 
> 
> You can find me on Twitter at [paxlegomenon.](https://twitter.com/paxlegomenon)


End file.
